Kurds blamed Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaeda-linked militant group, for suicide bombings that killed at least 67 people, saying Monday its members increasingly have been slipping into Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s ouster.
Thousands gathered to mourn at Irbil’s largest mosque, where the two main Kurdish parties – both U.S. allies, but often at odds with each other – held a joint memorial in a show of unity. The attacks Sunday devastated the Kurdish parties’ offices in the northern city, the heartland of the Kurdish self-rule region. One of the parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, said a video camera captured images of the man who blew himself up inside its office, slipping in alongside hundreds of well-wishers greeting PUK officials on the first day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha. Only the back of the bomber’s head was visible in the footage. The man, apparently in his 20s or 30s, shook hands with one of the Irbil office’s deputy chiefs, then stepped forward and put his hand in that of another, Shakhwan Abbas. "That’s when he blew himself up," said Azad Jundiyani, head of the PUK’s media department.
Almost at the same time Sunday morning, the second bomber struck a similar ceremony at the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP. U.S. military officials said Monday 67 people were killed and 267 wounded in the two blasts. However, the two parties reported a higher toll – 76 – 46 at the PUK office and 30 at the KDP office. "All indications point to the involvement of Islamic terrorists with al-Qaeda connections," Barham Salih, prime minister of the PUK-dominated sector of the Kurdish region, said by telephone from Washington. "This demonstrates that the terrorists are losing and this will only strengthen our resolve."
Kurdish officials say that since Saddam’s fall, more Ansar fighters have been infiltrating Iraq. "Our information indicates that al-Qaeda was behind this ugly terrorist act," said Kosrat Rasul Ali, the No. 2 man in PUK, told The Associated Press. He said there was full coordination among remnants of Saddam’s Baath party regime and al-Qaeda. Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armored Division, told reporters the Irbil bombings, along with a Jan. 18 attack in the capital that killed 25 people, were "different from the sort of hit-and-run style" of Saddam loyalists thought to be behind anti-U.S. attacks in Baghdad and central Iraq. "It concerns us that it could be another enemy, a different enemy, a foreign-influenced enemy, a terrorist network enemy," he said in Baghdad.
Sunday’s attacks brought the PUK and KDP closer, at least for now, and could fuel demands for self-rule. In an exchange of letters, the heads of the two parties, promised stronger ties. "The two of us, along with other political democratic parties, must work together to end these terrorist acts. The terrorists must realize that these acts will not weaken our struggle," KDP head Massoud Barzani wrote. "We shall work more seriously toward uniting our government. We will work together in order to live in a democratic, federal Iraq," replied the PUK’s Jalal Talabani. Neither leader was in Irbil when the attacks took place. |